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Social Service Series 

A Reasonable Social 
Policy for Christian 

People Henderson 



The Interest of Each 
Is the Concern of AU 



Social Service Series — No. I, Division 3 

A 

Reasonable Social Policy 
for Christian People 

Charles R. Henderson, Ph. D. 

Professor of Sociology 

in the 
University of Chicago 




Published for the Social Service Committee 
of the Northern Baptist Convention 

American Baptist Publication Society 

PhOadelphia 

Boston Chicago St. Louis 

Atlanta Dallas 



Copyright 1909 by 
A. J. ROWLAND, Secretary 



Published May, 1909 



UiiKARY Of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

KlIAY 191909, 



A REASONABLE SOCIAL POLICY 
FOR CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 



This discussion takes for granted that the readers 
are Christians at heart, and that they sincerely pray 
" Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done." The pul- 
pit and public worship have prepared the spirits of 
millions for hearing a sober call to specific forms 
of human service. The church is conservative by 
instinct, and is not open to revolutionary visions. 
Its membership almost universally respects the his- 
toric institutions of private property, constitutional 
government, monogamic marriage, and peaceful 
methods of progress. To such minds this out- 
line of a social policy is fraternally offered for con- 
sideration. 

The church is not asked to vote or pass resolu- 
tions on its propositions, or to take sides in disputes 
between employers and employed, or to declare any 
group schismatic or heretical which opposes them, 

3 



4 Social Service Series 

or to identify itself with any programme, or bill for 
a law or party; but only to give an opportunity, 
especially to younger men, to consider the new view 
of social obligations so that each individual can do 
his own duty with enlightened understanding. 

There are eternal principles of justice, reason, and 
love which never change; they are of the very 
nature of God, and are written very deep in human 
souls. These principles shine out in our sacred 
Scriptures in the biographies of saints and heroes, in 
the divine process of national education, and su- 
premely, in the story of Jesus our Lord and Saviour. 
The sun of righteousness rose to the zenith in those 
dark hours when Jesus died upon the cross for man- 
kind. Beyond that the revelation of love could 
never go. His own word was, " It is finished." 
The artist of holiness gave the last touch to a perfect 
picture. 

But the life of Christ is continuous. The stream 
of goodness is a widening river whose fountain is 
his throne. God is ever shifting the conditions of 
life. Duty is the conduct required in a particular 
time and land and group, and it cannot be foretold 
or written once for all in a book; we need divine 
guidance on every question and wisdom from on 



jl Reasonable Social Policy 5 

high for every new work. As truly as did Abraham 
must each generation of young Christians go into a 
new land never seen before by mortals; they must 
go out not knowing whither they journey, knowing 
only that God is Friend and Guide. 

The Holy Spirit is given us by promise to lead us 
into all truth ; and his method is one of wisdom, 
and is called among men the scientific method. This 
method is inspired by love of truth, and has no 
other end. It searches for facts of experience, for 
their tendency and meaning, and for the best way of 
utilizing them for human welfare. 

/. The individualistic bias and presumption in 
America. 

Any person who attempts to promote a common 
effort to improve human life by law finds himself 
in the chill atmosphere of an inherited prejudice 
which envelops law, ethics, and theology. 

This country was settled by isolated farmers, and 
perhaps a majority of families still live in isolated 
dwellings without the habit of co-operation with 
large groups. Each man works alone and turns his 
hand to a great variety of tasks. 

In frontier days each farmer carried his own rifle 



6 Social Service Series 

and defended himself against Indians ; only in 
urgent necessity did he join a company or army, 
and this he quit as soon as possible. Washington's 
soldiers, at Braddock's Ford, imitated the Indian 
style, and each man, protected by a tree, picked out 
his Indian for a well-aimed shot. Thus our fore- 
bears plowed and killed as individualists, and they 
could have done no other. 

Furthermore, our American ancestors were strug- 
gling to break the shackles of tyranny in Church, 
in State, in business. They built up their laws and 
governments and institutions in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, when all were demanding liberty from clergy, 
feudal lords, and kings. Men really believed that 
freedom was the one thing needful ; that each man, 
in following his own interest, would serve mankind 
wisely and effectively. Each man wished to be left 
alone, and claimed the same right for all. Under 
the circumstances of that age it was a seductive 
creed, and strong men liked it ; some grew rich 
and more powerful by means of it. They made it 
the basis of our constitution, and judges interpreted 
statutes according to it. 

Then the theology and popular sermons of the 
church were dominated by the same individualistic 



Jl Reasonable Social Policy 7 

bias and prejudice, for theologians are children of 
their age. Emphasis was laid upon one aspect of 
religious truth, the individual soul, individual duty, 
individual responsibility, individual peril, individual 
salvation. They proclaimed and urged a truth, but 
it was not all the truth, and one side of the sun was 
eclipsed in their teaching. There was good in all 
this tendency, an element which the world can never 
afford to lose or forget. In industry there was 
wonderful initiative, in business immense energy, 
in religion intense fervor and zeal; and these are 
qualities we must keep while we go on to the larger 
view. But " the good is often enemy of the best." 
Individualism unmodified by altruism becomes self- 
ish; egotism masks itself under the disguise of 
liberty; and in pursuit of one's own salvation one 
is in danger of leaving his brethren in an earthly 
inferno. And this happened in industry. States- 
men made an idol of an abstract theory, and it 
resembled a Moloch, to whom they sacrificed chil- 
dren, defenseless women, and oppressed men. 

//. We live m an era of corporations 

What individual could carry out a scheme of 
transcontinental railways or intercontinental steam- 



8 Social Service Series 

ship lines ? The petty shopkeeper's notions of barter 
are not large enough to meet the demand of the 
world-wide commerce. The movement toward com- 
binations is not the work of noisy agitators, but is 
the current of destiny. 

The concentration of capital about huge mills and 
factories, with costly machines driven by steam and 
electricity, is not a human invention, but a demand 
of human need and reason; that method alone sup- 
plies the wants of men at least sacrifice. Every 
buyer seeks the place which sells the desired goods 
at the lowest price, and this search always discovers 
a merchant who buys of the most efficient manu- 
facturer with vast capital. The " captains of in- 
dustry," responding to the requirements to pro- 
duce commodities cheaply, bring wage-earners 
together in masses. It is not the labor agitator, it is 
the business manager who first lifts his trumpet to 
call workmen into assemblies. 

The manufacturer, in order to transport his goods 
to the merchant and consumer at the lowest cost, 
asks for cheap and swift methods of transportation, 
and offers to pay for the service. The response 
is seen in railway, steamship, telegraph, telephone, 
and express corporations. It all goes back to the 



Jl Reasonable Social Policy 9 

shoppers and their insistence on goods at least 
sacrifice. The bargain counter commands union of 
efforts. 

PoHtically, the war for the Union cemented 
States into a nation, the most magnificent and power- 
ful " trust " on earth, above all other combinations 
in authority and power. 

Ethically and religiously we are passing up and 
away from theories of selfish fear into the purer 
air and loftier view of a divine patriotism, a uni- 
versal brotherhood, a justice which knows no class 
barriers. We are trying to rediscover our social 
gospel — the gospel of the kingdom of God — and 
now multitudes are prepared to inquire what that 
kingdom means to a voter, here and now. What 
the foreign mission enterprise is extensively, char- 
ity and social legislation are intensively and at 
home. 

///. While the souls of the generous and just have 
become expectant of this coming of the Lord in 
power and glory, a hitter cry ascends from the 
wage-earners. 

There is grim determination expressed in the 
demand for a social policy. This demand is not 



/ Social Service Series 

artificial, but a natural product of our situation. 
What are the vital facts of this situation ? 

1. The semi-dependent position of the wage- 
earners. Once the worker tilled his own land, 
owned his tools, controlled his surroundings ; now 
the capital is owned by a powerful syndicate; the 
raw materials he handles are not owned by the 
manipulator ; the profits belong to another ; the rule 
of the shop is made by the manager. The manager 
holds over each individual employee the power of 
life or death — employment on the terms of the em- 
ployer, or starvation. In this situation, the pretense 
that the workman is " free " to make or decline the 
terms offered by the master of his fate is hypocritical 
mockery. He is not free ; he must do as he is 
ordered. " Free contract " does not actually exist 
when a manager can dictate terms to a hungry man 
with children asking for bread. 

2. The social need is written in the fact that the 
neglected degenerating class is a menace to the 
wealth, the vigor, the character of the common- 
wealth and nation. Capital decays unless the laborer 
has energy to make it multiply. Diseases start in 
unfit dwellings, but spread to mansions. Victims 
of temptation in poverty become the temptresses of 



ji Reasonable Social Polic}) I f 

sons of wealth. The winds of heaven carry flies 
with germs of typhoid from the cesspools of the 
neglected slums to the lips of innocent children on 
the boulevards. We cannot afford to have diseased, 
tempted, ignorant, base, angry multitudes in a 
republic. 

3. The growing and rising industrial multitudes 
are in our times awake; they can read; they are 
becoming conscious of their power in our cities ; 
they are often in a majority; they are disposed to 
take care of themselves, and many of them believe 
that they cannot look for help to others. Is it safe 
to leave such a vast class to care for its own interests 
without help from law? 

There is the ever-imminent danger that the 
trade unions, hoping for no aid from law, will help 
themselves by anti-social means — the boycott, the 
strike, the picketing — all words expressive of battle 
and hate, all stirring hot blood. Of course, anti- 
social methods must be suppressed, and we have the 
injunction, the police, the militia, the federal troops, 
at the sight of whom feelings of rebellion are 
aroused and hate intensified. 

There is danger in certain arguments and slogans 
of the Socialists, as in their appeal to the " class 



12 Social Service Series 

consciousness," in their call to " crush the oppres- 
sors." Not all the doctrines of socialism are vi- 
cious; many of their criticisms are true and just; 
some of their constructive suggestions have been 
wise ; but this appeal to " class consciousness " is 
the forerunner of revolt, a call to arms, the insti- 
gator of inhuman passions. We believe in a justice 
which knows no class, a fellowship of mankind; 
and, therefore, we believe that a partisan watchword 
may become deadly. Yet if we do nothing but 
criticize, restrict, control, punish, can we expect any 
real reverence for the law? 

IV. The fundamental principle of a Social Policy 
is the co-operation of all for the welfare 
of all. 

I. A social policy is not based on class privileges, 
nor does it ask for special advantages to a particular 
group. " Class legislation " is distinctly unconsti- 
tutional, and ought to be. It is neither necessary 
nor fair to rob a few fortunate persons to enlarge 
the incomes of the lazy. Charity is for the relief of 
a comparatively few and exceptional cases and can- 
not be relied on for the support of any considerable 
group of the population. 



Jl Reasonable Social Policy 13 

2. The community, in a social policy, identifies 
itself with all its members. The eye, the hand, the 
foot, the teeth are joined in one nervous system ; an 
injury to one member is felt as pain by all. No 
commonwealth is rich while a multitude remain in 
abject misery. A look into the fiery pit does not 
enhance the joy of heaven for any person fit to be 
in heaven. When the multitude despise art no 
artistic work is secure. Only when the people are 
all intelHgent is science safe in the universities. 

Our venerated parents who struggled to es- 
tablish free schools were able to educate their 
own children in private schools; but they could 
not bear to see their poorer and less intelligent 
neighbors left to their own ignorance and spiritual 
night. 

3. There must be found a legal way to protect the 
rights and promote the interests of all. We must 
train men to look to the law as their constant friend, 
not their foe, not a mere club of repression. 

V. What is the programme of a reasonable Social 
Policy r 

We must make a selection and restrict the pres- 
ent brief outline to a few illustrations. We can 



14 Social Service Series 

merely hint at solutions of vast problems of supreme 
moment. 

I. Such a policy must include a programme for 
the promotion of public health, and especially the 
physical integrity and efficiency of the semi-depend- 
ent, the wage-earners, and their families. 

( 1 ) We must begin with little children and rescue 
them by law from exploitation in mines, mills, 
quarries, factories, shops. The banner carried by 
the National Child Labor Committee leads the way 
for a holy crusade. The feeble little workers are 
victims of their own inexperience, of the ignorance 
of their parents, of the greed of unscrupulous and 
unenlightened employers, and of the wicked neglect 
of a Christian people. 

(2) The nation must regard the working women 
as its care. They have no votes ; they have no access 
to the public press ; they are poor, and feel the spur 
of poverty. All honor to those who in dire stress 
of hunger repel the temptation to gilded pleasure 
and remain constant to their womanly ideals ! What 
can so properly be invoked for the defense of these 
women as majestic, chivalrous law? 

The domestic employees, too generally and snob- 
bishly called " servants," constitute a class of wage- 



JL Reasonable Social Policy 15 

earners who have been too much neglected by Chris- 
tian people. They need the protection of law against 
the abuses of the ordinary employment bureau, and 
it would be well to erect special municipal offices for 
their accommodations. Their lowly and isolated 
life is exposed to endless temptations, and they are 
often driven to public dance halls for their necessary 
opportunities of social enjoyment and acquaintance 
with men. The heads of families are notoriously 
suffering the penalty of long neglect. The happi- 
ness and health of families and the character of 
children are profoundly affected by the household 
employees, and their training and surroundings 
should, therefore, be a theme for thought by the 
church. 

Another group of wage-earners in our cities 
deserves special consideration — the girls in factories, 
mills, and mercantile establishments. They need 
the protection of law against the exploitation of 
unscrupulous employers. When they are homeless 
and friendless they require better surroundings than 
are furnished in lodging and boarding-houses. In 
many cases the wages paid for exhausting toil will 
not keep soul and body together, and this situation 
in a strange city is unspeakably perilous. 



/ 6 Social Service Series 

We must learn by careful study, by observation of 
men working under varied conditions, by consult- 
ing physicians who practise among wage-workers, 
and visiting nurses familiar with their home sur- 
roundings what are the causes of sickness and 
wounds and death. It is the duty of Christian men 
who profess to be patriotic to study the factory in- 
spectors' reports and learn how defective our pro- 
tective laws are as compared with those of older 
civilized lands. The history of industry proves that 
employers need to be taught how to save the life and 
limbs of their employees, and they ever require the 
compelling pressure of inspection and penalties to 
secure their observance of the legal requirements. 
A factory law not enforced by a sufficient corps of 
inspectors, is a wicked mockery instead of justice. 
Law sets a standard and educates the conscience of 
the masters of men. 

A reasonable social policy will include modern 
regulation of the condition of family dwellings 
among working people. The rich and comfortable 
class can protect themselves ; can build or rent homes 
which meet hygienic requirements. But multitudes 
of wage-earners are compelled to live near the 
mines or mills when they are employed long hours ; 



Ji Reasonable Social Policy^ 17 

they may be turned out if they complain; and they 
have no means of protecting themselves, even if 
they know the evils of unwholesome houses. 

A community owes it to the artisans and the 
laborers to guarantee that every dwelling shall have 
light, air, sufficient space and privacy, sewerage, 
and bath, and not be overcrowded. This it can do 
by inspection of dwellings, by condemnation of 
houses unfit for human habitation, and by build- 
ing decent houses for rent, if landlords fail to pro- 
vide a sufficient number of tenements of proper 
standard. 

The opportunity to work for wages is not always 
furnished by the community. It is not true that an 
honest and industrious man can find employment 
at any time. Many a strong and willing man has 
been transformed into a hopeless vagrant by the 
necessity of begging his way along the road to find 
occupation. There are difficulties in the way of 
finding where the employers need labor, even when 
there is a local demand. Many of the employment 
bureaus are directed by unscrupulous men, who 
take fees but do not furnish work. Immigrants, 
ignorant of our language and customs and in- 
dustries, are especially exposed to peril. Hence we 



/o Social Service Series 

must study and act in relation to the best methods 
of guiding idle workmen to places where reward 
is waiting for the worker. 

The rights of the wage-earners to organize them- 
selves into associations for mutual benefit is as 
clear as the right of employers to form corporations 
for personal benefits. This is conceded now by the 
moral judgment of all civilized nations and is recog- 
nized by law. That men abuse this right is not an 
argument that should create prejudice against as- 
sociations, unions, or corporations as such, but is 
simply a reason for guarding against perversions by 
legal enactments and judicial decisions. Part of a 
modern social policy will, include a sane and sym- 
pathetic attitude of religious people to the trade 
union and a system of regulation which will con- 
serve the advantages and rebuke the abuses of such 
powerful agencies. 

A reasonable social policy will seek to secure for 
every wage-worker an assured income in times 
when, from no fault of his own, he is unemployed 
and deprived of means of support. Such times are 
sickness, disablement from accident, prolonged 
invalidism, the feebleness of old age, death, and the 
weeks or months when establishments are closed. 



ji Reasonable Social Policy 1 9 

It is true that a savings fund will provide some- 
thing for such periods ; but experience has shown 
that the ordinary laborer's wages are too small to 
leave much margin for savings, and that the largest 
sum he can gather in twenty years is swallowed up 
within a few months of sickness. 

A more reliable, quick, and economical method of 
providing a steady inflow of money during such 
periods of enforced incapacity for labor is indus- 
trial insurance. It is strange that a system so rea- 
sonable and effective in all the other great nations 
of Christendom should not be understood or appre- 
ciated in America. Perhaps we are not so superior 
in mental quickness or alertness as our Fourth of 
July orators try to make us believe. Perhaps our 
individualistic philosophy and traditions have been 
an opiate to our consciences and made them sleepy. 
At any rate, until quite recently there was little in- 
quiry for information on the subject. After long 
waiting there seems to be some public Interest in a 
neglected means of preventing untold and incal- 
culable misery in countless homes. The principles 
of insurance involved are few and simple, although 
in drawing up laws, establishing rates, and organi- 
zing administration, experts must be employed. All 



20 Social Service Series 

intelligent persons know that it is ruinous to neglect 
fire insurance and life insurance. Many persons 
know that bonds can be bought of fidelity companies 
which secure payments of losses due to occasional 
dishonesty. By the payment of a small sum by all 
owners of houses and goods, those few who are hurt 
by fire can receive an indemnity which enables them 
to rebuild and start again in home or shop. The 
blow hurts, but does not kill. So also no man knows 
when he will die, but he knows that he must some 
day die — it may be to-morrow. By paying a small 
premium to a strong company one buys a legal right 
for his family to receive a large sum even the next 
week, in case of his death, and so they feel secure. 
In a similar way wage-workers can be guaranteed a 
payment of income during illness or old age when 
they cannot work. The principle is now generally 
accepted by all those who have given serious at- 
tention to the subject that so far as the business 
causes injury to a workman the loss occasioned by 
that injury should be paid for out of the product of 
the business, whether it be a wound, mutilation, 
sickness, or death. It is not fair for the public 
which enjoys the cheapened products of the machine 
manufacture to shirk the cost of production. Part 



ji Reasonable Social Policy 21 

of the cost of producing food, fuel, clothing, houses 
is this injury suffered by workmen. 

The method of equalizing or distributing this cost 
is by requiring the employer to set apart a certain 
sum each day for each employee, to create a fund for 
paying him income during his incapacity resulting 
from the work. Every prudent manufacturer sets 
aside a sum every year for the repair or renewal of 
tools, machines, and buildings, and he regards this 
as part of the cost of production. When he esti- 
mates the price to be charged customers, he counts 
this cost of repairs and renewal in the price of sale, 
and so in the end the consumers who enjoy the 
goods pay for the worn-out or broken tools, ma- 
chines, and shop buildings. We now see that the 
employer ought to estimate the loss of time and 
energy of workmen as part of the cost of producing 
goods, buy insurance to cover this cost, and charge 
the amount in the price charged customers and 
consumers. Thus the loss would be easily borne, 
being widely distributed and paid in very small 
additions to the prices of goods by the millions 
of consumers, many of whom are the workmen 
themselves. 

Since part of the cause of sickness and death is 



22 Social Service Series 

found in the conduct of the workmen or in general 
conditions outside of the industry, it seems fair to 
require the wage-earners to contribute to the in- 
surance premiums and to ask the general public also 
to add a reasonable sum from taxes. 

Such a vast system could not be organized and 
carried through by private companies. It can be 
done only by legal methods and by the adminis- 
trative machinery of city, commonwealth, and na- 
tion. The federal government has already enacted a 
law which guarantees compensation for certain 
classes of its own employees. But Congress has no 
power to make other employers insure their em- 
ployees; this is left to the legislatures of different 
States under our constitution. These legislatures 
never act; indeed, they cannot act, until there is a 
general and aggressive demand from the voters. 
Therefore, our first duty, as a Christian people, is 
to urge upon our representatives in the various 
State legislatures, the appointment of strong and 
active commissions to study this question and bring 
in well-considered laws for the alleviation of the 
suffering caused by past errors and neglect. When 
we consider hov/ many persons and families are 
hungry, cold, or dying in poor-houses because of 



Jl Reasonable Social Policy 23 

our long neglect, we can see that our action should 
be prompt. 

No reliable method has as yet been found for 
insuring income in case of enforced unemployment. 
The trade unions, through their out-of-work benefits, 
help many workmen ; but this is confined to a limited 
number. The experiments of cities with the col- 
lection of premiums from workmen for the creation 
of a fund for seasons of unemployment have thus 
far failed of their purpose, or only partly succeeded. 
A postal savings system, supplemented by local mis- 
sionary effort to promote thrift, would help to some 
extent to relieve the situation. 

One of the most pressing needs of the industrial 
group is cheap, swift, and reliable justice. When 
men must wait long years, and pay lawyers' heavy 
fees and court costs, and be bandied about from 
place to place, and lost in an unintelligible jargon of 
antiquated technicalities, they are educated to hate 
law and government and distrust the whole political 
arrangement of society. They see that rich men can 
carry on litigation and employ the best legal talent, 
while they despair in case of appeal to a higher 
court, and often are defrauded because their lawyers 
are incompetent. 



24 Social Service Series 

Justice and social security demand that all cases 
of disputes between workmen, or between employers 
and employed, should be decided without compli- 
cated process, in special industrial courts, such as 
those which France, Germany, and other countries 
have long enjoyed. In these courts the matter in 
dispute is presented in plain language and a judg- 
ment is rendered without costs, and parties go back 
to work without rancor or suspicion. Canada has 
a law that provides that before a strike occurs the 
parties in dispute shall repair to a commission which 
hears the arguments and seeks to reconcile the an- 
tagonists before they are arrayed in open warfare. 

A reasonable social policy to be advocated by 
Christian men will include a complete system of 
education for all people, with special adaptations to 
the needs of wage-earners who cannot establish and 
maintain private schools. Since wealth uses skilled 
workmen to make profits, it should be taxed for the 
training of skilled workmen, and it can well afford 
to bear the burden. It is now a well-established 
principle that the public schools should prepare 
youth for the shop, the mine, the factory, the store, 
and they are striving to meet this demand. 

The movement to improve technical education, 



ji Reasonable Social Policy 25 

however, may fall short of the full aim of educa- 
tion. It is not the sole or final end of a working- 
man to be a useful tool, a part of a machine to 
serve the employer more effectively. The working- 
man is a man, and has all the rights of a man in 
our heritage of culture. He has a human right of 
access to natural beauty and the works of art. To 
him belong the thoughts of poets, philosophers, 
historians, statesmen, theologians. For these enjoy- 
ments he must be protected in' his leisure; he must 
have a legal limit to exhausting toil ; he must have 
a recognized claim to his Sunday rest, his hours 
of domestic fellowship, his periods for sleep. 

The cities must open beautiful parks and play- 
grounds for rest and recreation, and for the whole- 
some enjoyment of children. Public libraries, read- 
ing-rooms, and art galleries, with competent and 
interesting interpreters, must be provided at public 
expense. The workman deserves these privileges ; 
he has toiled to produce wealth; he has risked his 
life; he has spent his blood; he has drained his 
strength for social wealth ; and therefore we ask 
for him not charity, but his just rights when we ask 
for such means of spiritual satisfaction. If the 
wage-earners are excluded from these nobler en- 



26 Social Service Series 

joyments, nothing is left them but crude animal 
gratifications which stupefy the intellect, destroy 
efficiency, and unfit men for political duties. 

It will be noticed that we have not here discussed 
public and private charity. Our " social policy " 
deals only with self-respecting men who own not 
only their own support, but a surplus for others — 
some of it spent in luxury and guilty display of 
waste. Workingmen ask not charity, but justice, 
and to discuss benevolent societies here would raise 
a false issue. 

Nor do we here discuss the important subject of 
social treatment of crime, because few real wage- 
earners belong to the criminal class. They feed and 
clothe society, while criminals prey upon their 
fellow-men. 

VI. The right attitude of Christian men to such a 
Social Policy. 

I. We must come to believe in our business world, 
that the entire people are to be considered. When 
a great railroad man cursed the public and told them 
that they had no right to touch " his business," he 
stirred the blood of revolution. When another 
conspicuous leader of industry was reported to 



ji Reasonable Social Policy 27 

claim that he was deputed by the Almighty to take 
care of the rights of the workmen, independent of 
their own views, the claim was universally felt to be 
blasphemous and anti-American. We are not going 
back to the times when the kings ruled by " divine 
right." We recognize no valid claim to private 
property except its service to mankind. 

Only representatives elected by the people have a 
right to make laws affecting their health, their com- 
fort, and their character. Corporations are the 
creatures of law for public ends, and when they fail 
to serve the public they have no moral or legal 
foundation for their special privileges. 

Business men must learn that they are trustees 
intrusted with power and wealth, and that power to 
mar human bodies and souls can never be left to the 
arbitrary caprice of owners of property. Business 
men cannot logically and consistently ask their em- 
ployees to be law-abiding, while they who assert 
superiority are themselves tax-dodgers or tyrants in 
abuse of their trust. 

2. Wage-earners, as Christian men, are called 
upon by every social interest to look only to legal 
methods of righting wrongs and promoting their 
welfare. They must be patient, even when courts 



28 Social Service Series 

rule according to ancient precedent, rather than 
according to common sense and present-day require- 
ments. For the sake of all that is valuable in civili- 
zation they are asked to be patient when legislators 
are slow to change the statutes and bring them into 
accord with the demands of our contemporary hu- 
manity. Constitutions seem to be fixed and petri- 
fied ; but, in fact, they are living things which grow, 
though slowly; and while they exist they deter- 
mine the decisions of judges. 

Appeal to force is not to be thought of ! It is 
the method of ruffians, savages, frontiersmen, and 
criminals. Between nations we are learning to 
organize justice by courts of arbitration and peace- 
ful discussion. 

Nor is appeal to force necessary ; because history 
proves that the people in due time can make their 
judgments felt in laws, and with universal suffrage 
the wage-earners have but to urge a measure and it 
will become the law which governors and presidents 
are obliged to enforce. 

3. The teachers of the nation, as Christian men, 
have a special duty in respect to this social policy; 
they are set to study and teach it. As a nation 
thinks in its heart, so it becomes. They who shape 



ji Reasonable Social Policy 29 

men's thoughts give form to their deeds and 
statutes. 

4. The church has a duty in relation to this social 
policy. Its fundamental idea is one with the prin- 
ciple of Christianity, love for God and man ; justice 
between man and man; reason in law and institu- 
tions. 

The church cannot enter politics and take sides 
with parties, cliques, agitators, or particular inter- 
ests. Its ministry is to all citizens alike ; its doc- 
trine is for the entire people. 

Nor can the preacher assume the task of giving 
instruction to mixed audiences of men, women, 
and children on the complex problems here out- 
lined. The time of the sermon is too short, and its 
inspirational value will be lowered by details and 
economic arguments. 

Yet the church can be helpful, and chiefly by 
means of the classes of men and meetings of brother- 
hoods, as well as by providing for lectures by com- 
petent specialists at proper times. 

In an address before the Religious Education As- 
sociation, in 1909, the present writer has discussed 
this aspect of the matter. Young men have by 
instinct and necessity an interest in physical energy, 



30 Social Service Series 

in business or industry, and in politics. It is in these 
spheres that they try to do their moral thinking 
and form their religious character. When they think 
of righteousness, it is chiefly in terms of right and 
wrong in sports, in business, or in politics. Hence 
the most direct, easy, and natural way for the 
church to guide the inner life of men is to help them 
to discuss with all freedom the actual problems of 
their own lives. Discussion is the only teaching 
method which produces educational results which we 
can test. It is next to impossible to find out whether 
a man has learned anything from a sermon to which 
he has listened passively, for he does not pass any 
examination, nor make any kind of response. But 
when he takes part in a real discussion of a prob- 
lem of the community, he is all alive, creative, ener- 
getic, forceful, and self-revealing. 

Furthermore, the class can immediately set their 
conclusions into action and report results. They 
can, as individuals, undertake to help clean an alley, 
open a playground or park, defeat a scoundrel at 
the polls, or push a desirable ordinance through the 
city council. They can, as a class, undertake to 
furnish probation officers for a juvenile court, or vis- 
itors to a charitable society, or leaders of clubs for 



Jl Reasonable Social Policy 3 / 

a settlement or mission. They can entertain repre- 
sentatives of the wage-earners and give them a 
chance to tell their side of the question. 

But if the church officers attempt to choke dis- 
cussion, to suppress freedom of speech, the class is 
dead. Young men of spirit will go off to some club 
where the atmosphere is tolerant. The best cor- 
rective of error is by discussion, because extremists 
call each other to account, and truth comes out of 
the melting-pot refined. 

The church can furnish rooms, invite lectures, 
provide leaders, without being responsible for all 
that is said. If the spirit of the congregation is 
earnest, patriotic, humane, the class will feel the 
inspiration of religion and the discussions will move 
straight to some useful service of God in helping 
man. 

The development of this modern programme in all 
its details is not possible in a pamphlet ; it is the 
labor of multitudes of men and women, in churches, 
universities, trade unions, legislatures, editorial 
rooms. The materials for study are found in a vast 
number of volumes of documents, records, reports, 
and books. Yet each intelligent citizen can con- 
tribute something to the cause of promoting the 



32 Social Service Series 

health, safety, comfort, and spiritual enjoyment of 
the working people. 

The Carpenter of Nazareth is our Inspiring 
Leader. " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of 
these ye have done it unto Me." 




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